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Whats your typical day....?

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Hello all,

Just a quick question, aimed at all of you IT guys currently working in the field....

I (and many others i should imagine) would find it of great interest to hear about a typical day in your job. Being someone who will be looking to get an entry level job relatively soon, i've no real idea what to expect !

If you're willing, everyone who has a job in It, please let me know your current role and what your usual daily procedures would be...

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Not much has changed on a regullar basis, except that I'm currently non stop doing different things far to annoying to discuss.

I work for NHS in small IT Department. We repair or replace desktop PC's and Monitors and Printers. The PC's are
Min. Specs 1100MHZ Pentium CPU with 512 SDRAM or DDR and 20GB. HD with Realtek LAN Cards.
Max Specs Pentium 4 3.0 CPU with 1GB DDR 80 GB SATA HD with onboard Realtek LAN cards
The newer PC's have PXE's boots which makes RIS so simple and you can install the software under 3 hours otherwise your looking at 5 Hours.

We build on Cat5e cables with 100mbps, they should be using optical cables, but always comes back to money.

Rather than installing the software from CD's the Images of each machine is saved onto the server.
This called RIS Building

A normal day would be starting at 8 AM, switching the computer, taking off my coat, just about to sit in my chair when someone from Help Desk enters the room and says there's an emergency in Day threates or A & E or Ward Desk.
Finishing at 6 PM.

We use an old database called Sunrise for logging jobs and making notes of what was done. Each engineer has 20 to 48 Jobs on their list. Sometimes you find you can't do the job because the Customer is on Holiday or hasn't given you all the information. Approxiamtely there are 220 jobs each day taken by help desk some are simple with passwords problem some are not!

Each computer has a Identification number. Whcih lets the Technician Know the location, the specs of the PC and the history.
Some Users out there are still on the old network and use Windows 2K.

The problem that arises is everyone wants a TFT
They also want very fast computers and they forget to tell you what their telephone is, what software they require, the office number or department it's going into and the purchase Number for the new TFT screens.

Day for me starts at 5am, view a few webcasts online at home whilst enjoying some breakfast and orange juice

head out at 7, check emails recieved late yesturday and overnight from overseas on my blackberry, reply to those i can, flag other ones so they show up in outlook when i get to the office

arrive at the office at 8, finish off any of the more detailed responses in email and pepper down my plan for the day

08.30, day officially starts, start checking the blogs on anything from sharepoint to esx server, keeping upto date is key in my line of the work and research is a pivitol part of that, if i learn anything really exciting i go and play around with it on our ESX Lab and learn a bit more about it, we have a almost finished setting up the complete lap with rapid deployment of infrastructure for sandboxing and proof of concepts, so it only takes a few mins to fire up an entire fresh domain to play with Exchange 2007 or something on, very useful resource!

10, teabreak with the boys, catch up on the goings on, whos in whos out, whats on the cards, this doesnt happen every day as were pretty self sufficient, but we need to know whos doing what really, then go back to what i was doing before

somewhere lunch happens

14.00, hit the forums a bit, vmtn, isaserver, msexchange, some news groups, cf (ofcourse) and plenty of others to keep me busy for days not minutes!
push forward with the overhaul of our internal team system, including file storage structure, lab material, study material, im trying to get everything organised at the moment as its kind of organically grown over the years, its messy!

16.00, a few final phone calls to clients if any issues are outstanding and are going to run into tomorrow, if not just to let them know were on the case and something will be done by c.o.b

17.30, home time, although I often dont get out of the place till atleast 18.00

19.00 - 20.00 depending on traffic and public transport, get home, what a day, just enough time for a bit more research or a bit of wow/bf2142 before a movie and bed

rinse and repeat

ofcourse this doesnt look like that every day, if we have a project or proposal to do that comes first and everything else gets bumped, we are gradually building up alot of IP so proposals and such are not taking as long as they used to

11am More study, some reading of latest interesting posts at forums and tech sites.
[currently Exchange deployment guides and exam testing software supplied by work in lue of unpaid overtime]
- lunch happens in here somewhere at the pc....

2pm further checks of site services as per 9.30am.

4pm Last study and information session at work - mixed with inane user requests for assistance...

6pm. Last minute check over of logs and emails, flag any jobs for the morning

6.30pm Go home

7pm. Dinner and time with the kids....

8pm kids are asleep... spend time with my wife.

9pm work or read from home on tech issues - or go online for MCSEworld admin...

11pm or later...go to bed.

This is an ideal quiet day - for really busy work days remove the study periods, add hours of frenetic activity as the sole IT bloke, and then add 2 or 3 hours to the going home time..which is how I have accrued 12 weeks holidays and 8 weeks unpaid leave AFTER they bought the training software for me...

Currently, I'm a contractor with a major DRAM manufacturer. I work as the technical writer for the group that writes and supports the software applications and libraries for the company as a whole. I'm responsible for administrating their SharePoint Intranet site which is the main repository for all of their documentation.

I am also a freelance technical writer and at any point in time can be writing or reviewing computer related books and articles.

7 a.m to 7:30 a.m. Depending on what kind of morning I'm having, I'm out the door to work. Commute takes about 30 minutes.

7:30 to 8 a.m. Arrive at work. Check work email for any tasks that might have floated my way. Often the software engineers will have a brilliant idea for some type of documentation they'd like to see on their SharePoint site.

It varies wildly from there depending on whether or not I have any ongoing documentation projects or not. I'm also involved in the PVCS to SVN project, converting software from one repository to the other. This is a worldwide project so I could be working with software stored in a server in Virginia, Italy, Singapore or half a dozen other location around the world.

Any changes in documentation get posted on the SharePoint site as a web, word, excel or other document. Often I'll see email traffic between customers and our group that can be turned into a tutorial or an FAQ and I'll make the appropriate changes to the site.

When things are slow, I'll surf the web or study.

I go for a walk most lunchtimes. About three miles in 45 minutes.

Every other Thursday morning, we have a staff meeting. That's where I get a lot of my information regarding documentation needs.

Any software engineer at any time can come to me with a request which can include documentation or just a change in SharePoint that they don't know how to make themselves.

Historically "documentation" has been based on "tribal knowledge" (word of mouth and memory), I've been tasked with changing all of that. My range is as broad as any of the documentation needs of my group including best practices, admin only data, customer driven data and anything else you might imagine.

In the evening, I go home and work on whatever freelance project I happen to be involved in at the time. I find frequent breaks helpful, especially since my brain is starting to get tired by this time.

Usually it's only the missus and me at home these days so we take dinner together. Many times she has work or other activities in the evening as well, so I'll grab a quick bite and back to the keyboard.

Around 9 p.m. or so, I'll knock off and unwind with a DVD or a book and make it to bed by 10 p.m.

I work shifts either starting at 7am or 10.30am, and finishing at 3.30pm or 7pm (like tonight - at work while writing this!)

6am - up and out of bed.
7am - in work, check services are running on 30 NT4 servers, and to make sure backups were successful over night.
8am - log onto call system. Normally have 5/6 calls per engineer running at once. Update any, check any new calls that have come in over night and assign to engineers if they can't be fixed over the phone.
8am - 3pm - support 2000 users on 5 MoD sites on NT4 or XP - mostly desktop work, some server work. Visiting users with application problems, doing swap-outs or rebuilds for problems that can't be fixed on site. Somewhere have lunch for 1 hr, drink tea and surf the net.

If I start at 10.30am, its straight into the calls until 5pm when we set up the backups for the night, secure the premises and clear off.
7pm - lock the place up!
7.30pm - at home

7am  Get up and drink as much coffee as possible before leaving the flat. Check email briefly on the PDA to check email alerts from various servers as something usually falls over during the night.

7:45  8:30 Travel to work and may get a few calls as the helpdesk phone is redirected to my phone before 9. I might get a Cant log on call which I can usually fix over the phone.

8:30  Arrive at work, log on and check email.

9:25  The helpdesk\ 1st line support guys arrive, I complain as usual as they are meant to start at 9.

9:30  11:00  Generally hang around with first line support guys to make sure the calls are being cleared and server back-ups are being checked correctly. Start assigning calls to level 2 techs that might need to go on-site or require some more complex troubleshooting.

11:05  Retreat back to my office to talk to the Technical Director and MD about what the on-going projects are. This can be network migrations\upgrades or new product testing.

12:00  A few calls from the helpdesk have most likely been escalated to me and these are dealt with as soon as possible. This can be anything from network running slow VPN down or the dreaded server down

1:00  After clearing up any calls logged to me I will start working on my own projects. At the moment I am working on a Windows 2000 to 2003 migration strategy for a new client and also devising a monitoring policy which will require VPN tunnels between sites and also a revision of LAN subnets as the IT guy installed each LAN with the same range range, doh!

If needed I will go to visit a client in the afternoon to check everything is ok with the IT service we are providing and say hello to few peeps. Usually end up fixing something while Im there or moving a PC!

5:00-6:00 (or later) usually do some config changes on servers at this time to avoid disruption and reboot if needed for Windows updates. If any installations are being done (they usually are) I will unpack the server start configuring it to save time when on-site.

7:30 Get home, have something to eat and chat to the wife.

8:30 Watch TV with the wife but will have the laptop on (certforums) and will also read through a book relating to whatever cert I am studying for at the time.

10:00 The wife turns in so I generally fire up my own SBS box for some lab work. Alternatively Ill do some Transcender tests or continue reading.

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